dark

Definitions

General English

Law

adjective not being used for hearings, trials, or other proceedings

Slang

adjective behaving harshly, unfairly or unpleasantly (to another person). Used in this way the term is part of the slang code heard among London teenagers since the 1990s. It probably originated in the black Caribbean community, although the same word was employed to mean stupid or obtuse in 17th-century English slang.

adjective stylish, impressive. This sense of the word derives from its use to describe ‘moody, deep’ drum ’n’ bass music in the later 1990s.

Origin & History of “dark”

Dark comes ultimately from a Germanic base *derk-, *dark-, whichalso produced Old high German tarchanjan ‘hide’ and middle Low German dork ‘place wheredirt collects’ (outside Germanic, Lithuanian dargus has been compared). In Old English the word usually denoted absence of light, particularly with reference to ‘night’; the application to colours did not develop until the 16th century.